Hurtin Runs Off My Shoulders
by Resentment
Summary: While trying to forget his recent mistakes with Caroline, Klaus has an unwelcome memory returned to him and consequences ensue. AU Klaroline Songfic


So this is what happens when I try to write from Klaus' POV. (I have like 6 of KlausPOV's to publish now, but this is definitely my favorite).

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**_Hurtin Runs Off My Shoulders_**

When Klaus first walked into the little shanty of a bar tucked so precariously into the side of several apartments and near an abandon factory, he had heard the Russian radio say something about playing all American music for the next hour. This might have been a problem, but Klaus felt himself reflected in the saddened low vocals of the Elvis Presley song so well that he never considered that this music could make a strong connection to the woman he left back on the home continent. It wasn't one of Elvis's hip flailing happy tunes and Klaus settled himself in for another variance of prolonged self-torture.

Tonight he was going to try practicing ignorance and wanted nothing that could disrupt that. He would sulk in his bitterness and let his pores musk in the strong brown liquid he forced the bartender to pour him and then leave the bottle of in front of him. It was becoming a subconscious routine to end his nights in close quarters to humans he didn't know and who had little way of knowing what he was or what he was capable of doing. It should also be noted that he purposely found a secluded location that had no blondes anywhere in the vicinity so that his mind couldn't falsely give him hope of seeing her here. He was prone to catching glimpses in the faces around him that didn't help his situation any further and actually seeing flaxen hair could send him on a bender for days.

His mind betrayed him, picturing the golden hair as he thought to forget it.

She had looked so… gone, unlike the Caroline who had begged for her life that night that he saved her from the wolf bite, not even as good as how she'd looked after he had bitten her. This was worse. She had looked empty to him. He looked upon that misery etched face and it painted itself right into his very memory, never letting him forget it or that he had caused it. She hated him with such a strong veracity that she had broken right in front of him and all because he'd made one wrong choice of words. He would rip out his tongue and give it to her in hopes that his sacrifice of ever uttering another word would keep her at his side forevermore and bring back the smile that made her eyes glow in the darkest of rooms.

He downed his entire drink in one go.

He was not forgetting her very well and made sure to pour himself a larger glass of his bourbon. Tonight he didn't want to remember her. He wanted to forget what he had done, what he had known, and who she had been to him. He didn't want to feel weak; he didn't want to feel anything. He wanted the world to become fuzzy and distant, even numb to the emotions that he tried to bury.

He wanted to turn off.

A new song came on over the radio as Klaus finished off his bottle with a tilt of the head that would have left any mortal tipping backwards off-balance, drunk or not. He knew the words of this song. He had heard it several times before. He knew it held some sort of significance, but for the world he couldn't remember why it hurt as the first lines trilled.

Where it began,  
I can't begin to know it  
But then I know it's growing strong  
Was in the spring  
And spring became the summer  
Who'd have believed you'd come along.

A memory slowly emerged in his mind. This song and its words were more than well-known to him. It wasn't just some random love song or dull-headed song of hope that bothered him as he listened to the way the tune bounced. It wasn't even the sugary words that stung him, but the chorus that he had caroled occasionally to himself in happier times. Mind you, never out loud.

He turned toward the bartender, whom seemed to be enjoying this American song, and made a low growl of his words.

"Change the bloody song." He said in a slow slurred form of his natural accent. The bartender didn't seem to understand him and only raised his eyebrows in confusion. So Klaus repeated his words in the dialect of the bartender and gritted his teeth as the bartender merely shrugged him off as a crazy drunk.

Hands, touching hands;  
Reaching out, touching me, touching you

By the time Klaus had snatched the bartender and thrown him across the room, the song had already reached its crucial point of no return. He was too late to cut off the speaker that aimed down from above the bar.

Sweet Caroline  
Good times never seemed so good

Klaus reached up and pulled down the three speakers nearest him, but the melody kept chiming on from the other side of the room. The speakers weren't enough. He needed to find the source of the noise and stop this madness before he did something irrational and made himself known in the small town. The last thing he needed was hunters after him when he was trying to be alone.

I've been inclined  
To believe they never would  
But now I,

look at the night  
And it don't seem so lonely  
We fill it up with only two.

He pulled the wire from the back wall that had once been attached to the speaker and followed it down and into a backroom that had a large system of machines. Some of them looked more like surveillance, but that didn't stop him from taking it on anyways.

And when I hurt,  
Hurting runs off my shoulders  
How can I hurt when I'm with you

The system crashed down easily with one large swipe of Klaus' hands and he found a moment of relief that he didn't have to hear the retched chorus again. He walked back into the bar where a few shocked patrons still remained, eyeing him with fear of what he was. No man could move that quickly and now he had to clean his mess further.

He rushed the nearest person and bit their neck, snapping it as he quickly drained a bit of the man. With the warm blood still on his lips he moved to the next hiding behind a pool table.

Warm, touching warm

No, he couldn't have heard that. He had demolished the sounds starting place in the little bar already. He was thorough with it. The words weren't anything that an electronic device had produced. Someone must have sung them in the bar. They had to be toying with him. They were testing him and successfully building their own grave for doing so. His eyes scanned the room. Who had done it? No one seemed to be making any noise now.

Reaching out, touching me touching you

His head swiveled in the direction he swore he'd heard it and saw the bartender starting to revive and push his legs up from the floor as if to run. It had to have been him. Klaus had seen the man nodding along to the song as it had started, even if he didn't understand the words he could still mimic them and now he was doing it to irk the murderous monster.

Well, consider the murderous monster irked.

He pulled the man up off the ground and stuck his fingers deep into the mouth of the offending man. He dug in hard looking for the spinal cord and pulled up until the man's head rolled off from the support having been removed through his own teeth.

Sweet Caroline  
Good times never seemed so good  
I've been inclined,  
To believe they never would  
Oh, no, no

HOW?

Sweet Caroline  
Good times never seemed so good  
Sweet Caroline,  
I believe they never could  
Sweet Caroline...

Piles of bodies trailed along the bar haphazardly, one man was skewered by a pool stick while the boot of another was all that could be seen from the wreckage that was once the pool table. The twelve or so patrons would not be singing the song or retelling this night's tale to anyone ever.

With that knowledge in the back of his mind, Klaus stormed away from the sullied bar and out into the night air. His mind was a cacophony of feral thoughts as he tried to bury the tune in his head. He had been its source. He had finished it in his mind having once known it by heart. There was no peace in his thoughts and he knew what the only solution was to gain some sense of normalcy to his world. He would have to go back to her. He would have to claim defeat this one time and apologize for once so she would let him come home. He was not happy with his own surrender, but he had to admit it made him a lot saner to be around her than to be forced away by his own stubbornness. She was after all his Queen.


End file.
